A Tonier Image Is Sought for Eighth Avenue in Midtown

The New York Times
February 7, 2008
By PATRICK McGEEHAN
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/07/nyregion/07eighth.html

Eighth Avenue is no longer Manhattan’s answer to the Tenderloin district of San Francisco. But now that almost all of its peep shows and pornographic video stores have been eradicated, the open question is, what will this once-seedy part of Midtown become in its next life?

Officials of the Times Square Alliance have begun a campaign to attract distinctive stores and restaurants that they hope will create an atmosphere on the stretch of Eighth between 40th and 53rd Streets that fits comfortably between tourist-thronged Times Square and the gentrifying Hell’s Kitchen neighborhood to the west.

New street-level retail spaces are expanding as new glass high-rises, like the Hearst Tower, The New York Times Building and 11 Times Square, which is under construction at 42nd Street, redefine Eighth Avenue. The new towers have inspired the alliance to coin an immodest nickname: the Avenue of Architecture.

But rather than wait for those new spaces to fill up with bank branches and national chain stores, the alliance, which represents property owners and businesses in the area, is hoping to attract locally owned and less-ubiquitous stores that might appeal to neighborhood residents as well as to office workers.

“If you live at 44th and Ninth, there’s not a clothing store anywhere around, not a bookstore,” said Tim Tompkins, the president of the alliance.

The area already has plenty of foot traffic; several blocks of Eighth Avenue above 42nd Street draw more than 30,000 pedestrians a day each, according to a report compiled by the alliance. But office workers in the neighborhood tend to leave at lunchtime and after work. A recent study conducted by the alliance found that more than $250 million of potential spending was being lost annually to other parts of the city.

The first trick will be to entice the throngs passing through the area to slow down and take a look around, said Scott M. Stringer, the Manhattan borough president. Mr. Stringer’s office has pledged $108,000 toward the installation of sidewalk lights and signs to help people navigate the neighborhood, he said.

“The key here is to get people out walking and going into a neighborhood where they didn’t think they could walk, to start to create a different kind of robust economy,” Mr. Stringer said.

Mr. Tompkins is planning to draw more attention to the area after dark by holding a lighting festival in which lighting designers would be invited to illuminate the facades of buildings like the Port Authority Bus Terminal.

The alliance also hopes to persuade the city’s Department of Transportation to make the area friendlier to pedestrians by installing new newsstands and bicycle racks — and by removing the metal fence (installed during the Giuliani administration to protect pedestrians) that runs along the western curb of the avenue between 42nd and 43rd streets, Mr. Tompkins said.

“We hate that fence. It just looks terrible,” he said, adding that many pedestrians choose to walk in the street rather than between it and the adjacent shops.

Changing the perception of Eighth Avenue, which “had a lot of porn and a lot of 99-cents shops,” will take some time, said Faith H. Consolo, chairman of the retail leasing and sales division of Prudential Douglas Elliman Real Estate.

“I think it could be a great street to have your office on, to live and go shopping on,” Ms. Consolo said. “But that’s a year to 18 months away. It’s not happening overnight.” Ideal shops, she said, could include higher-end women’s clothing stores like Searle and stationers and gift boutiques like Montblanc.

Still, storefront rents could run as high as $200 to $250 a square foot, she said, prices that are daunting to many small merchants and restaurateurs.

But, illustrating how difficult it could be to redefine the area, Mr. Tompkins cited a very different group of potential tenants. He said he would prefer to see the avenue attract “homegrown New York merchants” like Two Boots pizzeria and Brooklyn Industries, a casual clothing merchant.

Lexy Funk, the president of Brooklyn Industries, a nine-store company that started in Williamsburg, said she has considered opening a store in Hell’s Kitchen and might be interested in space along Eighth Avenue.

“We’ve always taken risks in our real estate,” Ms. Funk said. “The issue right now with Manhattan real estate is it’s become too expensive for small merchants. We’re competing against banks and international chains.”